So Charles Hill posted a link to his weekly Vent, this time about the “six degrees of separation” theory. And of course he mentions the Kevin Bacon variant game, and I got to thinking about that.

Kevin Bacon co-starred with Tom Hanks in Apollo 13.

Hanks was among the vast array of celebrities interviewed by the late Harry Martin, who was for many years the entertainment reporter for Channel 3 in Sacramento (passed away in 2008, aged 81). Harry was also the only person who managed to interview Leonard Nimoy with his Spock ears on.

Among Harry’s co-workers at Channel 3 was longtime news anchor Stan Atkinson, whose other duties for the station included hosting the local cutaway breaks during the Labor Day Muscular Dystrophy Telethon.

One year when I was in high school I accompanied my dad and some fellow CB radio club members in volunteering behind the scenes at one of these local telethon events; I helped man the refreshment table, and that’s how I met Stan. So I’ve got a Kevin Bacon Number of 4, right?

But according to a story my parents used to tell, during a period when they managed a motel in midtown Sacramento, one of the guests was Slim Pickens. Allegedly I was small enough to sit on his lap.

Pickens, of course, worked with about as many stars as Harry Martin interviewed, including John Wayne, Peter Sellers, Mel Brooks, James Garner, Clint Eastwood, Charlton Heston, Steve McQueen — pretty much everybody but Kevin Bacon.

All those big stars with whom I have just two degrees of separation.

And if anybody Slim knew or worked with ever met Kevin Bacon, that would let me claim a Bacon Number of 3.

All the other candidates but mine are big poopy-heads, and so are all their supporters!

Following up, hence the altered date.

For all the talk this election cycle about a Republican Establishment, it’s become apparent there is also a Conservative Establishment that isno less panicked about Donald Trump than the other one.

National Review‘s recent “Against Trump” issue, while correct in principle, was ill-timed and ill-toned — and will likely turn out to have undermined efforts to elect an actual conservative to the presidency in a year when we were better positioned to do so than at anytime since 1980.

The entire political system is losing its shit, including the sector that has spent the last several years pleading with voters and elected officials to stop losing theirs.

If Trump ends up winning it will be because of one simple truth about politics: Desperation does not inspire confidence.

If they wanted to stop Trump what they needed to do was cause him to appear desperate.

There are still no committed delegates for the Republican nomination. Political consultants may think they know how things will go, but they’re prone to viewing the situation through their own navels (guess from which direction?). A saying about how foolish are those who allow themselves to be led by fools, goes here.

Sometime between last night and this morning, somebody went to the trouble of setting an intact six-pack of empty Guinness beer bottles on my property — well off the county right-of-way but right next to our entrance drive.

Having recently acquired a 12-gauge shotgun but not having had the opportunity to shoot it, I had an immediate brainstorm.

First, of course, I carried the six-pack farther away from the road and into the sheltered area, backed by a nice upslope, where I’ve done some occasional shooting in the past — for example, to complete the decommissioning of some failed but then-intact hard drives.

The shotgun is a no-frills pump-action model made by Mossberg, and the first thing that happened after I fired the first shot was that I couldn’t get the slide to open. I’m still not sure what the trouble was, but after some fiddling I finally got the spent shell to eject so I could load another (I hadn’t loaded the tube magazine, but had carried a handful of shells out with me to load one at a time) and resume shooting.

The second shell ejected easily, the third gave me a little trouble but did come out more easily than the first. I can only hope the action loosens up with practice, or I may, in the instance of a self-defense situation, have to exercise undue care in shot placement (between the eyes, of course) lest I not have the opportunity for a second. That thought is going to keep me awake all afternoon.

These rounds were birdshot; I’m going to be on the lookout for slugs though.

Another thing I’ve learned is that my pistol — a Beretta with a four-inch barrel — seems to be pulling to one side. This wasn’t much of a problem when shooting at hard drives from close range, but I was standing farther back from the bottles and was more likely to knock them over than to break them. I’ll need some range time with paper targets to diagnose and adjust accordingly.

A dusting is what we got, but it’s resumed snowing and the wind is blowing.

Before it got light I heard the sound of a limb giving way somewhere, and returning from a sightseeing drive I saw a number of fresh pine boughs on the ground in the county right-of-way next to the road, so that may have been it.

I’m guessing the moisture feeding this snowfall is from the Gulf or the Atlantic, pulled all the way around the low pressure center and into the cold air being drawn down from Canada. It’s light enough to drive in but the wind persuaded me to head back to the barn.

No idea how much longer it’ll last, considering it wasn’t supposed to last this long in the first place.

No complaints — since I’ve no place to go, I’ll sit here with my coffee and let it snow.

In light of the aforementioned alleged chance of wintry precipitation in this weekend’s forecast, a song lyric I wrote six years ago in honor of a similar forecast. Apologies to Simon and Garfunkel and music lovers everywhere.

Hello winter, my old friendI see you’ve come around againTomorrow there will be some rain drippingAnd that night so many cars slippingOn these roads, narrow, winding and all too darkA skating parkAnd the soundOf sirensWill echo through the chilly nightAnd we will see the flashing lightsNear the fenders that are all wrinkledYet so pretty with the snow sprinkledWhile the victims stand exchanging insurance cardsIn nearby yardsTo the soundOf sirensIf I were you I’d hesitate
To get onto the interstate
Because you know it won’t be heavenly
Going sideways doing seventy
Knowing it will end with a hollow, crashing thud
And spurting blood
And then the sound
Of sirens.

Weather Underground forecasts a middling chance of snow hereabouts on Saturday morning. I will, of course, believe it when I see it.

¢

I’ve been ambivalent about which of my phones to use, but I think that’s over now. My newer one — which runs an outdated version of Android but is supposed to get the latest update sometime this decade — has better battery life (and if the battery dies it can be replaced) but doesn’t interface well with in-car Bluetooth for hands-free telephone use. My older phone, which has had the latest Android version for months already, has no trouble with Bluetooth but suffers from its 2014 battery that can’t be replaced.

I’m hoping when the new phone does finally get updated the annoyances will go away, but if the Bluetooth bug remains I’m willing to revert to how I used my phone in previous vehicles — by not taking calls while I’m driving.

¢

I’ve seen at least one argument to the effect that Ted Cruz is not a “natural born” citizen, but is instead an “ordinary” citizen. I can’t help but wonder what is the “ordinary” manner of gaining U.S. citizenship, and how it differs from being “natural born.”

There are only three ways to become a U.S. citizen. The one that applies most, er, ordinarily is by being born on United States soil. That’s how I got mine, and it’s how Donald Trump got his. Another is by undergoing a naturalization ceremony. For this you have to apply, take a test, and swear an oath.

The third way is to be born outside the United States but to a parent who is a U.S. citizen. That’s how Ted Cruz got his — and also John McCain. And even if Barack Obama had been born in Kenya instead of Hawaii (spoiler: he was born in Hawaii), he too would be a natural born citizen of the United States because his mother was a U.S. citizen.

There are three ways to become a citizen, but there are not three classes of citizenship. If you gained your citizenship at birth and did not have to take an oath, you are a natural born citizen. If you were not natural born to U.S. citizenship, you have to be naturalized. It really is that straightforward.

Many people object to the blanket “born on U.S. soil” path because of the “anchor baby” problem, and argue that even on U.S. soil “natural-born” citizenship should be limited only to cases where at least one parent is already a U.S. citizen, and require a naturalization ceremony otherwise. I am inclined to agree with that. But it wouldn’t change this simple fact: